Realization of Consciousness
by n. bjelica
Summary: A little coda for OMWF. Vignette, B/S UST, angst.


**TITLE:**
Realization of Consciousness

**STATUS:**
Completed 24 November 2001

**AUTHOR:**
n. bjelica 

**EMAIL:**
n_bjelica@hotmail.com 

**FEEDBACK:**
Yes, please. :) 

**CLASSIFICATION:**
B/S UST, angst.

**RATING:**
PG-13 (language) 

**SPOILERS:**
Season Six up through and including Once More, With Feeling. 

**SUMMARY:**
A little coda for OMWF. 

**DISTRIBUTION:**
Available at http://www.angelfire.com/weird/bjelica/ and at FanFiction.Net. Please email me if you're interested in archiving my fic elsewhere, I'll be stunned speechless. 

**DISCLAIMERS:**
All characters, locations, and such contained herein are the property of Joss Whedon and his band of merry men. Not for to sue the nice fanfic author! 

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**
Oh come on, like you weren't wondering what happened after that curtain rang down. (-:I started writing this with a sort of stream-of- consciousness technique while avoiding taking notes in my Thursday evening computer class. At the time I was indescribably bored with the structure of information technology business units. 

* * *

Buffy reached forward and crushed her mouth against his in a desperate attempt to get closer. She could feel his teeth under her mouth, and unconsciously hummed a tuneless melody of want. 

Spike leaned into her and returned it with all the pent-up desire a kiss could express. He clutched her arms and shared her ragged breaths, completely heedless of the grungy, dirty alley or anyone who might be near them.

She grasped his jacket and smelled its leather smell, while creeping one hand inside it to run it up and over his chest, pausing on a red shirt-clad shoulder, finally smoothing over his neck to bury fingers in the back of his hair. Buffy opened her eyes, startled by herself as she realized what she had done. 

Spike continued to press into her as she began a slow examination of the planes of his face and torso, sliding her hand down his arm and feeling his ribs beneath the soft, worn t-shirt. He answered her wordlessly, by nibbling on her lower lib and chin.

A million miles away, footsteps clicked on the asphalt and Dawn called out. "Buffy! Where did you go?" Buffy didn't answer, but instead slid her hands down to grasp the belt loops on Spike's jeans and hold him captive. 

Perhaps intuiting her meaning from the action, he slid sideways deeper into the shadows, taking her with him, and she reveled in the closeness of him, as he kissed his way up her jawline to her temple. He could feel the quivering muscles in her arms and shoulders, telegraphing the need she felt.

They didn't make a sound, and eventually Dawn went back in to the Bronze.

Buffy felt like there was a volcano of emotion under her skin, waiting for the right second to explode. There was the desperate longing for something long missing, the sense of closeness to someone. There was the need within her to feel ordinary again, the appreciation of the cold bricks behind her back and the warm breeze through her hair. She closed her eyes again and gave herself over to the kiss more fully, breathing his name on an exhalation. Admitting to herself that she wanted this new direction was a difficult admission to make.

Meanwhile, Spike pulled back from the kiss, reached out a hand, and ran his fingers through her hair, taking advantage of the mussing the breeze had delivered, stroking the strands as he brushed them out of her face. She felt a tug in the pit of her stomach at his cautious touch, and a separate, distinct tug at the vague distance of her consciousness. Two voices warred in her head. One whispered deleriously, you want this; the other, filled with fear and painful denial, you can't, you can't. "I want this," she murmured, unaware she'd spoken the words aloud, as the two factions in her head argued with each other.

He dipped down and kissed her lips again. Abruptly she broke off on with a whimper and murmured, "I can't. I just'I have to go." She kept her hands tight on his hips in flagrant denial of her own words. 

Spike looked at her. "Of course you do. Of course you can't." His words echoed flatly in his own ears and he wondered, once more, how much of this he could take before he went completely insane. Resignedly, he pulled her hands off her hips and said, "You should go home. Where it's all hearts and flowers." Sarcasm flowed like a river, and his eyes shone bitter for a second before he relented. "It's okay, pet."

She refused to meet his gaze, pointedly looked at the ground as she sidestepped him. Finally she looked up, words piling in her throat and refusing to move even as she wished she could be more eloquent. "I'm sorry," she offered, and broke into a run as Spike watched her leave.

* * *

Not surprisingly, she beat Dawn, Tara, and Willow back to the house. She had run herself tired, then returned to the house and was in the kitchen making some herbal tea in an attempt to become sleepy, when she heard the front door open. She steeled herself for the inevitable questioning, but perhaps the other three were as wary of conversation as she was, because they all went straight upstairs. She guessed they were getting ready for bed since she could hear the bathroom faucet intermittantly breaking the silence. 

She sipped her tea and tried to rationally discuss with herself the situation. She was attracted -- very much, she could admit to herself privately -- to Spike, but she had to face it. 1: he was an undead, evil vampire, chip or no; 2: her friends thought he was evil and unredeemable, and if she forgot that all she had to do was remember her first meeting with the sex-bot and the lecture from Xander; and 3, most important: she had to set an example for her sister, for whom she was solely responsible, and Dawn didn't need to see her sister repeatedly boinking the undead. Especially after that Halloween incident. No. It just wasn't possible. Under any circumstances. Too many people were depending on her for her to just throw caution to the wind and just do what she wanted. She tried fervently to resign herself to that fact as she rinsed her empty coffee mug and put it in the dish rack before climbing the stairs to her cold, empty bed.

* * *

Spike trudged back to the graveyard,ignoring the few remaining drifts of song-and- dance fever still affecting the citizenry of Sunnydale, deep in thought about the Buffy. It was perfectly clear to him that she was tied up inside with conflict about him. He smiled with some small satisfaction that he'd managed to get this far under her skin. She still claimed she didn't want him, but what she had just done violently contradicted her words. He could still feel the warmth of her under him, and the vanilla scent of her still clung to his clothes. And he could hear the denial in her words when she had said, "I can't." He felt a shard of hope twinkle to life somewhere deep inside him, and hummed his way back to the crypt.

* * *

Independently borne, two dreams bore a distinct resemblance to each other. A lithe blond girl crossed a room, wearing a flowing dress of some gauzy material, and met a man dressed in black, where they embraced unreservedly, and the rest of the world went on uncaring.

* * *


End file.
